Saturday, October 30, 2010

Whew.

Well it's been an eventful... what? 48 hours since we went home from the hospital. Well, not eventful by normal-people standards, but eventful for us! I even had a blog post all written out after our first night home but got called away by Lia and literally didn't make it back to the computer to hit "Post" until now, a day later. It feels a little obsolete now so I'll just sum things up.

First night home was rough. Robert can't really help much at night since he can't feed Lia, so we decided to have him sleep the night through so he could be more useful during the day. So the night was up to me. I think I was exhausted and dehydrated, because it seemed like I just couldn't produce anything for Lia to eat. She had been a good little eater up until the 10:00 pm feeding, and I just could not get her to settle down afterwards, plus it had been almost ten hours since her last wet or dirty diaper. She was acting hungry and finally at 12:30, I caved in and gave her some formula. It's funny, it literally felt like the end of the world at the time. It feels like there's a sort of cultural undercurrent for moms nowadays, where "good" moms only exclusively breastfeed their babies, and if you don't, it's because you didn't try hard enough or care enough about your child or something. (Maybe I'm projecting or overreacting - I don't feel that way but I do feel like there's a lot of judgment out there. Maybe I'm wrong.) It felt like I was failing as a mother - my very first night at home with my baby - by caving in and giving her formula.

But you know what? After almost three hours of fussing, she gobbled up a bottle, went right to sleep, slept four hours straight, and pooped and peed before her next feeding. It was so obviously the right call. Thankfully, one of the pediatricians I talked to in the hospital said to me, "There are a lot of rules out there and a lot of opinions on feeding, but as long as your baby is getting fed, you're doing the right thing." I'm so glad someone said that to me and I'm so glad I'm starting to learn that lesson sooner rather than later in this process.

Since then, things have been going swimmingly, actually. My milk is in, and Lia is clearly getting what she needs from me now. She still has nights and days mixed up - she's an angel in the morning, sleeping right through until the afternoon, then fusses in the evening and most of the night. But we're managing. The nights are just long. We saw the pediatrician this morning for a weight check, and she's down an ounce from her discharge weight but no one is worried. My mom and dad also got in town today. My dad is just in for the weekend, but my mom is staying for two weeks to give me a chance to get some sleep during the day. It's tough for me to sleep unless I know someone else is actively watching Lia, so having another set of hands and eyes watching her should give me some peace of mind.

On the way to the doctor's this morning!

YAWN!

Where am I again?

I'm trying to catch up on life online but I'll probably be really sporadic for awhile. And, it's pretty clear that this blog is going to turn into a "Newborn Parenting" stream of consciousness blog, so my apologies for those who just don't care about this sort of thing. (I don't blame you - I didn't until a week ago!)